The boss of a pioneering Scottish fish breeding firm is to lead a major international company’s aquaculture operations in four locations around the world.
Neil Manchester, general manager of Argyll and Stirling-based Landcatch, has been appointed as managing director of the newly-formed aquaculture business unit of Dutch multi-species fish breeding company Hendrix Genetics.
Landcatch was taken over by Hendrix in 2011 after being sold by Port Glasgow-based Lithgows – the industrial and shipbuilding company owned by the Lithgow family, which farms at Ormsary Estate, at Lochgilphead.
Mr Manchester became general manager at Landcatch in March 2012. He takes up his new post on January 1, 2015.
He will be based at the Hendrix Genetics headquarters in Boxmeer, Netherlands, and will be in charge of Atlantic salmon, coho salmon and trout breeding operations as well as genetics services in Scotland, the Isle of Man, the US and Chile.
The move follows a landmark deal signed in October between Landcatch, which supplies Atlantic salmon eggs and smolts and genetics technology to the international aquaculture industry, and Seattle-based Troutlodge – the world’s largest rainbow trout egg producer.
The deal included Landcatch taking a 45 per cent shareholding in Troutlodge and the setting up of a new joint venture to establish an independent Atlantic salmon breeding programme, backed by genetics research, in Chile.
Earlier this year, Landcatch announced plans to “revolutionise” salmon breeding and help one of Scotland’s economic success stories.
The company said its “groundbreaking” genetic research had led to technology which could help to protect farmed salmon against the scourge of sea-lice, which cost Scottish fish farmers tens of millions of pounds each year to control.